taking a stand

sometimes you just have to take a stand. i've just unsubscribed from a number of blogs because they don't allow sharing on pinterest. this wasn't an easy decision, because it includes blogs i love, like spirit cloth and resurrection fern. now that pinterest has responded to the masses and changed their terms of service, there is no reason for this. if you're blogging your work  - you're putting it out there to be seen (unless i've completely misunderstood blogging). one of the very best ways to be seen is on pinterest. so for me, to hoard one's blog (or flickr) photos is to completely go against the very sharing spirit that is blogging. and i won't be part of it anymore. and while i respect the right of artists to protect their work, i would rather do without those blogs in my reader than support an unsharing spirit. and let's face it, a photo of the work is not the work itself, so you might argue that the work is quite safe.

to add to my righteous indignation (something of which i'm not proud, as righteousness is one of my biggest pet peeves), a couple of the people whose blogs i unfollowed (i haven't listed them all above) are ON pinterest, pinning away themselves! the nerve! they have no problem curating the work of others, but don't want theirs to be curated. how does that work?

i personally have received so much more (exposure and even income) from a spirit of sharing and openness than i would ever have gotten had i blocked everything and kept it all to myself.  my photos wouldn't be part of an article on slate or a lithuanian tourism website or in a ted talk or featured on apartment therapy or available on getty images (those are the only ones that i changed from a creative commons non-commercial license on flickr, due to getty requirements) if i hadn't been willing to share them.

i intend to continue to cull such blogs from my reader as i come across them. i'm just one person and it probably won't at all make the least bit of difference to the non-sharers, but i feel it's worth taking a stand. it's the only way to keep the interwebs free and open, as they were intended.

EDITED:  i should add that i am not talking here about photography or photos that people have for sale as photos - i'm talking about pictures of quilts and stones and garlands and vats of dye. not having photos which are for sale proliferated on pinterest is something else entirely. and many photographers have sites which are set up so they can't be tumbled or pinned - and i have no objection to that. 

in which she exposes that the mafia is live and well in denmark

about two months ago, i made a big mistake. like many mistakes, i didn't realize it at the time. i decided to purchase a domain ending in dot dk. i am starting a new business providing all kinds of services in english - from writing to translation to teaching - with a couple of friends.  since our target audience for the business is danish, i shrugged off my preference for dot com domains and decided to buy a danish one.

the first red flag (which i blithely ignored) was that you cannot buy a .dk domain through a large international provider like GoDaddy (where i've bought all of my other domains). so i went to a danish provider called DanDomain and for 123.75DKK i purchased markmywords.dk. i figured that afterwards i'd just move it over to GoDaddy where all of my other domains reside and then manage them in one place. (oh, how wrong i was).

minutes after i purchased the domain, i got another email from something called dk-hostmaster, telling me that i needed to go to their site to complete registration of my domain. they gave me new log-in and password to do so (if you're counting, this will now make 3 different log-ins and passwords to get to my domain once i move it to GoDaddy  - which at this point, i still believed was possible). but, having been in denmark for going on fourteen years, i figured ok, this is just danish bureaucracy at its best, so i dutifully signed in and activated my new domain.

then, i proceeded to look through the help on both DanDomain and dk-hostmaster (which is in english until you really need it) to find out how to move my domain over to GoDaddy. by now the red flag had become a red flashing light, and as i got a back and forth conflicting answers with DanDomain telling me to ask dk-hostmaster and dk-hostmaster telling me to ask DanDomain, the flashing light began to sound alarm bells as well.  still i brushed it all aside and thought i would be able to solve it. i found on GoDaddy's site that i had to own a domain for 60 days before it could be moved, so i decided to just try to point the domain at our servers from where it was.

again, i was so naive. i dutifully entered the server name on dk-hostmaster, where it said that they had to approve such a move. they then proceeded to ask the most intrusive and unnecessary questions of the server admin in the UK (where our j2research.com site resides) that they decided they didn't want anything to do with it! what happened to the openness of the internet?  i began to think of dk-hostmaster, a rather mysterious organization, as The Godfather, at about that point.

turns out that dk-hostmaster is a godfather of sorts. i thought they were a state organization, but they aren't, they are a consortium of all of the private web hosting providers in denmark and they keep tight-fisted control, like any good mafia boss, of all use of .dk domains.

by this point, i wanted to create the website on google sites, where it would be FREE and where they surely couldn't say no to that. at last i talked to a support guy at DanDomain who sounded sensible (in retrospect, i should have asked his name, as i'm quite sure that corlione was there somewhere). he said that if i purchased a DNS-forwarding subscription for a mere 120DKK per year, i could point the site wherever i wanted it. what he neglected to mention was that it was wherever i wanted it as long as it was in denmark and i was paying through the nose for it). so i dutifully fronted up the 120DKK and tried to point the domain.

by now, you can guess what happened. nothing, that's what. despite having entered the IP address (we had returned to the idea of the UK servers) of our servers, all that showed was a redirect to the mob boss at dk-hostmaster.

so last monday, in resignation, i finally purchased web hosting to the tune of 923DKK per year from DanDomain. of course, for this premium price, i then learned that i couldn't even have a PHP-based website, as that would require another 50DKK per month. yes, the danish web mafia was trying to squeeze even more money out of me, just so i could use open source programming on my own friggin' domain!

happily my business partner's husband brilliantly stayed up late converting our PHP-based site to javascript and it's now up and running. have a look if you'd like. it's here at markmywords.dk.

and the lesson in all of this? never, ever, ever buy a .dk domain. the real world wide web is freer than that (unless, of course, they get their way with this SOPA thing).

birds of a feather

i took a little walk out in the yard this morning. it was foggy out there and very still, but the balmy (it's supposed to reach 10°C today!) air was filled with joyous bird song of all sorts and the odd call of some geese from down on our lake. i stood there, breathing in the fresh air and all of that bird song and i pondered the controversy i stirred up yesterday.

i had a few pangs because in some sense it wasn't actually any of my business. it wasn't my art being copied, so why should i care? but the fact of it is that i did care. and i found as the day progressed yesterday, that i cared a lot. i couldn't get it off my mind. and it's not only because copies devalue the original and i felt it affected the stones i'd purchased from margie. in fact, that was actually the least of it.

i think what bothered me most was that margie seems to me to be one of the biggest-hearted, most giving, down-to-earth creative souls out there...the way she shares her process, her thinking, her insights, her life and her craft are all acts of a giving and kind person who is engaged in what she does. for this to happen to her seemed so unfair. to someone so truly an artist and a craftsperson. you could accept it more easily if it happened to someone whose work didn't seem so unique or who didn't share it in the same giving, warm spirit. in fact, i saw some bloggy controversy a couple of years ago over those wooden mustaches on a stick that i didn't feel badly about in the same way because it didn't seem to be THAT special of an object. but what margie makes is special - her missing pieces stones and her merfish - they're really unique. so to copy them for sale so blatantly and unapologetically (as it turns out), is simply so disheartening.

but what is heartening is the way that margie's community rallied around her. i can't actually find any community rallying about renee (or shall we call her pell?) (and i spent quite some time looking before i wrote this). so although one could become disillusioned in all this and feel hesitant about sharing one's process and creativity online, it is also very powerful to think of how many people support margie in this - and her right to defend her creative, intellectual property. and although there are many people out there crocheting stones, these designs are so distinctively hers and they're very clearly being copied.

when i first saw one of the impostor stones on the etsy front page, i actually thought that someone was reselling margie's stones. they are so distinctive, they call her immediately to mind. and then when i looked closer and realized it wasn't margie's stones at all and further found that there were also merfish in the shop, i was shocked!  and what's strange is that it would seem to be totally unnecessary. renee is obviously very talented at crochet and has some sweet little animals and such in her shop. so why steal margie's ideas?

so while i still don't understand it, nor her refusal to admit copying and just stop it (please see the comments on the post below for proof of this), i am heartened to see the crafting community rally together around an artist and a person like margie. that is another testament to the way in which she has shared her creativity and built her reputation via her blog and flickr and her etsy shop. it seems that birds of a feather do flock together. and if that makes us followers, so be it. there's a big difference between support and bullying and between what's right and what's wrong.

it's hard to be original

with all of the amazing goodness that's out there online - on blogs, on flickr - and now gathered in one spot on pinterest, i guess it's no wonder that you come across people who are copying good ideas and passing them off as their own. it's hard to be original and it's hard to know where one's influences come from.

for example, i know there are loads of people making birds that are similar to my clarity birds. i practiced by making the spool bird pattern and then, once i knew it well (including its shortcomings), modified it and made an improved version. but i realize i'm not alone in this. i'm also not alone in making quilts and i haven't come with any designs (yet) that are my own. i'd like to think that what i make is unique because it comes from my own particular hands and with all the quilts and all the fabric in the world, there's room for everyone's interpretation of quilting.

even the feather stones i paint were inspired by the work of others - we see things, they inspire us, but the ones produced by my hand on stones i carefully selected on a beach walk are an expression of my creativity. even if i was inspired by someone else. and i've always been careful to give credit where credit is due.

stones which i purchased from margie's resurrection fern etsy shop

but sometimes, you come across something that is so blatantly a copy of something truly unique and lovely that an artist is making and you shake your head. because there's no defending such blatant disregard for the creativity of others. i'm talking about the lovely, unique and amazing stones created by margie of resurrection fern. they are real one-of-a-kind originals. something completely uniquely margie. and which should not, like a fabric bird or a quilt, be copied. however, they are being copied, for profit. blatantly and without credit - down to the styling in the photos and the whole stated philosophy of loving nature behind them. and you can see it for yourself here. but be warned, if you know margie's work, you will find it just disgusting.

i think it is really sad. the internet has given us all such a forum for sharing our creativity and enjoying the creativity of others, but it also apparently has opened the doors to such copycats. next thing you know, someone will be copying kit lane's fabulous little jacabunnies. and the thought of that really makes me sick.